Cannot change wallpaper in Windows 10

[undiejuice]

Hi,

My issue is that I am unable to change the wallpaper in Windows 10 version 1903, AND 1909.

Since upgrading Windows 10 version from version 1607, I did not have this problem. User accounts be it power users, users etc... had no problems changing wallpaper.

The administrator account however seems to be the only unaffected account as I can change the wallpaper with no problems. I thought this was an administrative issue, so created another "test" account with administrative issues to see if that was the issue, but encountered the same problem.
Tried creating a new administrative account by changing the User profile location back to C:\users (default location) in the registry with another test account; but no success
Copied "user.dat" from the only working administrator account into the default user folder; and created a new account with admin, power user rights but no success either


Things I've tried so far with no success:
--------------------------------------------------------------

*Enabling the option to "Remove background images (Where available) under "Ease of Access" menu
*Removed all options relating to 'Active Desktop' through the registry
*Group policy: Unchecked "Force a specific start background" //administrative templates//control panel//personalization (Local computer) or APPLIED to force this for ALL user accounts, and still nothing happens.
The only thing that HAS worked by using a customized icon instead of the (grey user icon) at lock screen and forced change for all user accounts; this worked
* I am not on a domain
*Reinstalled fresh installation and updated version of Windows version 1903 with same issues as abov;


Any ideas?
Cheers

[dugimodo]

Is windows activated? Does this problem happen both through the windows personalize menu and also when you right click on an image file and choose "set as desktop background" ?

[undiejuice]

Is windows activated? Does this problem happen both through the windows personalize menu and also when you right click on an image file and choose "set as desktop background" ?

Hi.

Yes Windows is activated and when I click personalize, the wallpaper doesn't change. See images attached:
When I try and click the image, nothing happens and it automatically changes to 'solid color.' If I choose 'Slideshow' nothing happens as well.

Cheers

[wainuitech]

Somethings corrupted. Something to try.

Press the Windows key + R copy/ paste in the following code:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Th emes

(The following is copied from elsewhere)

Double click slideshow.ini file and open in Notepad
Empty the contents of that file in Notepad by selecting all the text and deleting it
Save the changes and close File Explorer
Try and change background again.


If the Slideshow file is already empty then thats how its meant to be.


What happens if you go to a picture on the Computer, right click it - set as desktop Background ?

[wainuitech]

Edit to above -- For some reason the word Themes in the path split, there is no gap.

[undiejuice]

Thanks bro,

Already tried the above method as well.

I've reinstalled Windows (clean install) several times before and it seems to only happen each time Window does an upgrade. Tried upgrading to the 2004 version, (hoping this one will sort it out) but I yet to install this version successfully.

[undiejuice]

Okay, maybe this might help someone else in the future?

I've managed to resolve the wallpaper issue. In my case, this was related to user accounts on another partition instead of the default C:\user folder. Somehow, Windows 10 doesn't like the idea of user accounts being on another partition, but there is also a work around to direct a user's contents elsewhere.... (Eg. Documents, Music, Videos, Desktop etc...)

You need to create the account first and sign into it and change the default location from there eg. Right click Documents/properties and choose "location tab" and change from C partition to whatever.

So a user account can still reside on C partition while hefty and large sized files like documents, video and music files can be located elsewhere instead of C drive taking up more space AND still be able to change wallpaper!

Hope this helps!